Kikyou Tales
by Salome Sensei
Summary: A series of little tales all centering on Kikyou. From love to angst, in darkness and light, paired variously or alone. Stories have various ratings but am listing the fic as a whole as M, Adults Only.
1. Everpresent Soul

Author's Note: For Vexatively, who is full of life and soul.

Everpresent Soul

The jewel is like the moon between my pointed fingertips. It is eternal, shining, bestowing its light on all, prized and coveted. You can no more hold the moon than you can own the power of the jewel, though there are those who will always try. You tried, my Inuyasha, and I even wished it for you. Such wishes destroy us, and retribution is merciless. Perhaps.

I look down upon myself, seeing past, present, and future at once. The pyre on which I burn cannot burn the jewel anymore than it can eclipse the moon. There was a time I would have put out that light, Inuyasha. My arrow was aimed in the direction of darkness, of an eternal, moonless night. But kami is merciful, and I see from afar that renewal is always possible.

I died and was reborn in Kagome, though this did not end the cycle of my existence, all-encompassing and all-forgiving now. My incarnation's bright, full-moon light rendered me no more than a shadow across that lunar face for a time. And when I was forced back into the shell of an empty existence, the shadow was dimmer still.

Then, at last, I was truly released and able to release you, too, Inuyasha. Now I am the moon: glowing with the beauty of witnessing all without judgment or need or loss. I gaze down upon you and your miko with new grateful eyes.

I have but one prayer from the everpresence of my immortal soul: may the gift of a truly open heart be given to all who ever live within the jewel of mortal existence.


	2. The Miko's Healer: SuikotsuKikyou

Author's Note: I love Kikyou with Suikotsu, hence this little tidbit from Sui's POV.

The Miko's Healer

I am happily beholden to you, Kikyou. I love you with what reach and capacity I can. Where once I healed, my brothers made me destroy. That was love, then. You were drawn to the doctor in me, but he died, twice, and will return no more. You revived me nonetheless, to be something new, neither mercenary nor medic but mate. You scoured the country to find a witch, like your Urasue, who could reanimate decaying bones and infuse them with borrowed souls. Now I am your healer as you are my miko. We belong to one another. We sit beneath the stars, our shinidamachu twining around us as we are wrapped in each other's embrace. Together, we are warmth enough to banish painful thoughts of dead brothers and lost hanyou lover. We are creatures of clay and make-believe, but our shared fantasy makes us far more fortunate than most.


	3. Insensate

Author's Note: Kikyou interacting with children, living her post-reanimation half-life. PG.

Insensate

"Lady Kikyo! Lady Kikyo!" the child cries, in a high, little-girl voice whose shrillness is tempered for her by the beauty of simply being able to hear it. The youngster runs toward the Priestess, plump legs pumping, cupped hands outstretched. It is a wonder she does not fall as she scrambles forward, and Kikyo's lips stretch into a reluctant smile at this tiny miracle. "Look what I found!" the child sings as she reaches her goal, holding out an enormous yellow peony blossom for Kikyo to admire.

"It is beautiful, little one," she says. And it is, however shortlived. Being a child, the girl does not realize how easily a life can be ended.

"Smell it," the creature effuses, wriggling with excitement.

Kikyo brings her nose to the full bloom and inhales. "It is lovely." She can smell nothing. She tries to be grateful for sight. She gazes at the pale, sweet face of the child. "And what will you do with your flower now?"

"It's for Yuki," she beams, pointing to a sturdy, handsome young man working in a field nearby.

She continues the effort of a smile. "He is indeed lucky," she offers. The child nods vigorously. The Priestess believes the youth is the child's brother, but of late the villagers all seem to blur together: so many lives around her, all so vigorous and so brief. Her senses are so dull; her desire for life is little more than stubbornness now.

The child scurries off, and Kikyo watches a single yellow petal flutter to earth in her wake. She retrieves it, and rubs it gently between the pads of slender, insensate fingers. The desire to brush it against her cheek is foolish, an act of faith in the face of impossibility. It harkens to a time, long ago, when she admitted to no limits on the possible.

She closes her eyes, raises the petal, and hopes.


	4. Liminal Embrace: KikyouKagura

Author's Note: Kikyou/Kagura, finding intimate solace in each other's presence. MA. Adults only.

Liminal Embrace

You stand before me, the manifestation of feminine perfection. I watch, mesmerized as you remove one beautiful kimono after the other. Soft silk and satin of rich colors slip to your delicate feet as your fingers nimbly unwrap and discard them in graceful display. Each layer accentuates a facet of your radiant beauty—the cherry-brightness of your eyes, the black sheen of your ornately fashioned hair, the pale glow of your porcelain cheek. Oh Kagura, I cannot take my eyes away: you are everything I desire, all I once longed to be.

Though your beauty far surpasses mine, I suffer no jealousy. You compel me like no other because I know that beneath the surface you are as tainted and grotesque as I. When I have looked my fill upon your lush breasts and softly rounded hips, I come to you from behind. As I rouse and plunder you, I caress and claw the ropey spider that scars your back. And after I have brought you a fleeting glimpse of ecstasy, I hold your quivering body to mine and feel the hollowness in your heartless chest.

I treasure all you allow me to give you, lovely Kagura, because I am far more scarred and more hollow than you. That you dance for me, that you accept my gratitude and treasure my body, is more than I dreamed possible the day Urasue brought me back to life. I suffered so in my rebirthing, and so much worse when I faced the truth of my refashioned body and its wretched excess. Yes, I am bones, earth, ash. True, I depend upon the souls of others to keep me animate. But this does not touch the depth of my anguish, my horror. Urasue had far more devious intent for me than simple servitude. My purpose was to be that which she could never otherwise attain with her infirmities of both appearance and temperament. Because no one would have her, Urasue wrought me as her lover.

When I gained consciousness in my new form, I knew immediately that my creator must die for her transgression. I did not ask for resurrection; I had suffered enough in one life to seek only the bliss of oblivion. Nor did I wish to know my reincarnation this way, to touch my soul after it came to fill the miko who even now seeks to reap the warmth I sowed within Inuyasha's soul. But such complex reasoning was beyond my newborn mind as I came to myself in this body of refuse, death, and magic. In that moment of renewal, my outrage flared only at the one true, unforgivable wrong she had done me, at the misshapen mass between my legs that Urasue had formed in a selfish, savage impulse of twisted lust.

The coarse appendage she fashioned with gnarled fingers from dirt, ginger, and what I came to know only after later investigation of her cave was the moldered remains of a wandering monk's severed penis was never meant for a woman's body—for any body. With casual cruelty, the witch made me something far worse than demon or hanyou, and I could not detest her any more than myself. I took her life because she succeeded in far worse than the unlawful and unwarranted reviving of life. Urasue achieved far more than Inuyasha and the miko will ever know in making me something apart, a monstrous other, my body as liminal as my soul-borrowed life.

Only you have shown me another self, Kagura. Lovely and cursed, you dance for me. You grasp and hold me. You whisper my name. You take my knotted phallus and coat it with your liquid pleasure. You cherish my thick, alien root in your every orifice and cry out your bliss for me.

My thanks run to deep for words as, time and again, we come together to defeat our despair in each other's ruined embrace and emerge as more than the sum of our deviant parts.


	5. Tortured Heart: NarakuKikyou

Warning: Dark, as Naraku torturing Kikyou would be. Don't read if you're not 18+ or if you're easily squicked by darkfic.

Tortured Heart

Kikyou hangs, limbs spread wide and head down, from Naraku's thick, foul-smelling webbing. His tentacles wave and twitch behind his back as he crouches before her. Her soulbringers fly around the room in sensuous loops. He has not paralyzed her this time; he wants her alert. Her garments display the rips and tears that give evidence of his sadistic whims—and also their limits: he has neither made her bleed nor stripped her bare and forced himself upon and inside her. He is not beyond these desires, but it is her will, even more than her body, that he seeks to ruin. He cannot dismiss from his mind the image of her grasping the inuhanyou to bring him to hell with her. Their embrace burns behind his eyes. Coming upon such a sight when his thoughts were already overfull of the grotesque love of weak Onigumo's heart brought not merely shock but outrage. She defied him in life, in death, and now in reanimated unlife. He is determined: in whatever form, she does not belong to Inuyasha—and never will.

Thus far, he has summoned her, commanded her obedience, threatened her existence, even denied and ignored her. Nothing has given him what he seeks: freedom from her hold on the fragment of Onigumo that festers within him. So, now she dangles from his web, smelling of both insolence and apathy. But he will make her face the truth. Perhaps then, and only then, will he be able to escape his need of her. His dreams of her. His nightmares.

From the corner of his eye, he sees the neatly folded robes that mirror the tattered array the miko now wears. Always in his chamber sit these fresh, crisp garments that he forces his Kagura to don before he takes her…nightly. How many times has he rent them from his offspring's grossly insufficient and self-smelling body? How many times has he sworn he will not do so again? It never satisfies, never can. Nor, of course, could the body of this Kikyou of bone and clay suspended before him. This creature is Kikyou but not Kikyou, just as he is that feeble sliver of Onigumo and yet so very much not Onigumo. If not for the desire he still holds for the long-dead miko, he would be rid of that fragment of his past identity for good.

His strategy now is clear. She will be forced to acknowledge her responsibility for his suffering and will face their bond. Then, she will either yield her existence or attempt to end his. Either will suffice. Not having to face this shell of the Kikyou with her scent and touch of mortality will give him ease. Likewise, facing a fiery miko who will direct her flames at him rather than the worthless Inuyasha will stir and please him. Provoking, coercing: something will work. It must.

As yet, she has quietly withstood his tempered violence. She neither writhes in her bonds nor condemns in word or gaze. Oh, her apathy drives him mad; it is lethal to his objectives. She must not have this power. He begins. "We are not so very different, you and I," he coos, a smile beginning in his glowing red eyes. "We both deplore human frailty, both defy death and exist by feeding on the souls of others. Mortal pleasures offer pale comfort, and the prize we seek is beyond our power. And yes, Kikyou, you do seek power…to rid yourself of the hatred and jealousy you feel for your reincarnation and that pathetic white-haired mutt. You judge me, just as you have always done; such an easy route to denying how much we share. You are as much a monster as I—perhaps moreso—because I own the depth of my hatreds and the breadth of my cravings. Can you face and claim your own?"

He watches as Kikyou raises her head and her eyes meet his. They are dull, earthen, impassive. She is attempting to misdirect him, but she cannot. He sees her slender hands, bound at the wrist, balling into fists. His smile stretches and becomes a triumphant laugh. He cannot say where the dance will end, but it has begun.


	6. Bound: KikyouKagome

Author's Note: Dark Soulcest (Kikyou/Kagome). MA. Adults only.

Bound

Your mouth is open in the shape of a perfect, tiny o. You cannot believe I've done this, but I have and you will, soon.

There is a touch of blood at your left shoulder where my arrow grazed your flesh as I aimed my arrow to bind you to the Goshinboku. I frown, watch the little wound bloom, crimson on white. Did I mean to pierce you? Not consciously, though why else would the shot have strayed? But the second attempt achieves its purpose flawlessly, holds you in place at your right shoulder by your clothing alone.

You cannot soar, like our Inuyasha, so you are not bound to his spot. Your feet still touch the ground. I am certain you are wishing that if you must be made to suffer at my hands then it should be at precisely the place where your—our—beloved suffered. Romantic child, be rooted. All is as it should be: you are held for real demands, not escapist fantasies.

I silence whatever the first words out of your mouth would have been when I kiss you. You have not overcome the shock yet, so you are passive and soft. Your lips yield and I relish the small, intimate pressure. Yet my need is deeper; my goal lies lower.

Your stillness opens into a tiny whimper when, eyes on yours, I lift your short gown. I crouch, tug off the strange undergarment, and press my lips to your core. Such rich beauty there: were I alive as you are, I could taste more than just heat, feel more than the vague brush of curling hair, smell more than mortality. But any more than this would be almost too much. I kiss the beautiful closed bud firmly, then spread open and savor with lavish pleasure the blossom that even our Inuyasha has not yet dared to enjoy.

I draw my tongue—softer than my life ever was and my unlife ever could be—between the delicate yet firm young layers of you and settle to suckle at the little swelling heart-node. Your struggling hand at last falls, stops trying to remove the arrows I have bound you with. You yield to me now as I have had to yield always to you, to your ascendance in my world and in his heart. And I would still give you more.

My mouth tells you all, Kagome. I have known such desire, such deep and frightening passion. I have wanted, craved with an ache unnamable in words, unattainable in action. I loved with magic and fire in my heart. And yet he saw only the frail, faint surface of it. I withheld more than I ever gave, though I never meant to be so afraid, to keep so much inside, to leave so much undone. Is this how you love, too, sister of my soul? You are a brave girl—braver than me—and still you contain so much more than you unleash of yourself.

Show me more, brave miko. Let my arrows' restraint free you into my knowing embrace. Share yourself with me now, so I can teach you that which I could not learn myself.

Yes, feel my arms wrap around your hips. Move into me, despite and because of your need to be free of me. Reach out, soar, die a little in my embrace. Give us both this glimpse of immortality.

Understand, Kagome, that you and I share both a soul and the object of our first ardor. I helped him to ripen and you will pluck the fruit. This is our shared fate. I accept it, willingly. But first, see: burning envy can so easily become blazing passion. Before I fade forever, I must summon your courage by feeding, hoping, worshiping here, in the mirror between your pale thighs.


	7. Dissipation

Author's Note: A rendering of Kikyou's final moments and thoughts. Originally written for LJ comm Iyissekiwa (with 250 word limit).

Dissipation

Even when she was mortal, Kikyou's life never truly felt her own. A priestess is dedicated to higher matters than the needs or the pleasures of the flesh, the fancies of the soul. Even when Inuyasha held her, there was something ethereal, insubstantial about it.

Now, as this form of bones and clay, animated by the souls of the departed, begins to disperse, there is a rightness to it, as if she had always existed, suspended in this moment in time. The experience of life and death are subjective, impossible to know outside one's own reality. But what if one has never known oneself, has lived and died to serve a greater good, only to be reanimated to serve a lesser evil? Has any of it been her choice? Has her life, her body, ever belonged to her?

And what of anger, a source that seemed in itself to give her substance, pursuit of revenge as pure and sustaining as protection of the jewel had been? Ignoble and infused with the petty hatred of the witch who reformed her in her own twisted image, Kikyou has come to recognize that the power of antagonism is even more illusory than that of love. How unreal seems that affection she felt for her wild hanyou, once upon a time.

In this moment of dissipation, Kikyou is struck by a flash of awareness, the gods' final gift or their vengeance: we do what we must to make meaning in a world without answers.


End file.
